Cell breathing is the constant change of the range of the geographical area covered by a cellular telephone transmitter based on the amount of traffic currently using that transmitter. When a cell becomes heavily loaded, it shrinks. Subscriber traffic is then redirected to a neighboring cell that is more lightly loaded, which is called load balancing. Cell breathing is a common phenomenon of 2G and 3Gwireless systems including code-division multiple access (CDMA). CDMA2000 and wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) are designed to manage cell breathing.

Note that for years Vodafones reps etc went on about CDMA breathing, like it was the worst thing ever to warn off clients, funny thing is now they have a CDMA based system breathing occurs on the vodafone WCDMA network as well.

Given the countries that have multiple carriers on 900 or other frequency blocks, like the UK and OZ for example, I'd have thought most of these technical issues would have been resolved.

Also remember OZ has had a mix of 850 and 900MHz use for a while.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat New Zealand as a Solution Architect for all things Linux, Virtual and of course Cloud. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

Cell breathing is the constant change of the range of the geographical area covered by a cellular telephone transmitter based on the amount of traffic currently using that transmitter. When a cell becomes heavily loaded, it shrinks. Subscriber traffic is then redirected to a neighboring cell that is more lightly loaded, which is called load balancing. Cell breathing is a common phenomenon of 2G and 3Gwireless systems including code-division multiple access (CDMA). CDMA2000 and wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) are designed to manage cell breathing.

Note that for years Vodafones reps etc went on about CDMA breathing, like it was the worst thing ever to warn off clients, funny thing is now they have a CDMA based system breathing occurs on the vodafone WCDMA network as well.

I remember 15 years ago my mate was working at Vodafone NZ and they were trying to get their 2G network to breath, they had IBM involved and instead of having 3 load patterns (morning/night drive, business and nighttime) and manually configuring each tower for each load, IBM was trying to automatically configure the network for the best dynamic loading patterns.

They for years couldn't get it working as well as manually setting each load settings, and scripting the load times each day to reconfigure.

Which leads to the question, how would this even effect Vodafone, if Telecom's network breaths?

Couldnt agree more. I have myself seen towers of different providers side by side, on apartments,office buildings,slums and what not. Vodafone is literally touching the heights of being disgusting and a nasty competitor. Why cant take this as a head on challenge and offer more value in its services. but nah it wont.

I, at one stage always had been a supporter of vodafone being a GSM operator but now i find its nothing but a money S##king leech.

zocster: hmm anyone is doing the actual 'testing' of independent expert opinion? keen to know who that would be

I am close friends with a person in the trade, and according to them the interfence is only where vodafone has used "Generic Gear" e.g with a freq of 800mhz to 1000 because that is cheaper than singluar gear what vodafone have used in Large CBD Areas.

So in saying that, yes Telecom's 850 network is interfering with Vodafones network, except Telecom are in the right as they have brought the license to 850 and it is vodafones fault for not locking down the gear to their own network bands.

edit: "Please not he or she does not work directly with any mobile network, and any of this infomation can be found with a google search"

I just watched the 3 news article online at
http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Business/tabid/369/articleID/102194/cat/839/Default.aspx#video

and something I picked up which was not mentioned here was Telecom said that 'the problems were largely of Vodafones own making'

Sounds like Vodafone didn't plan their 3G network design very well, or hobbled it together over the last 5 years and when trying to rapidly scale up like Telecom did (total build time less than 12 months) they didn't have the smart engineering resource or gear to resolve the big issues.

I'm still gobsmacked that Vodafone took 5 years to build 65% of a 3G network that Telecom took less than a year to build - and they would still slowly be building it if Telecom didn't build theirs.

Remember when the iPhone 3g first came out and they had issues in the states with them and it was just that they were requesting too much power.. My understanding is that the furthur away a phone is the more power it needs on its code, and there is a limit to the total that a site can put out, and that a far away phone is worth several close by phones for the amount of power, so the far away ones get denied before closeby ones unless they are more important for some reason, and the iPhones were the first to suffer when they had the old software in them.

exportgoldman:I'm still gobsmacked that Vodafone took 5 years to build 65% of a 3G network that Telecom took less than a year to build - and they would still slowly be building it if Telecom didn't build theirs.

Vodafone should look at how reception vanishes and obviously calls are disconnected every single time you start the downward leg on the Auckland Harbour Bridge heading North... before they spend hundreds of thousands on court costs which... is UNlikely to improve reception.

zocster: hmm anyone is doing the actual 'testing' of independent expert opinion? keen to know who that would be

I am close friends with a person in the trade, and according to them the interfence is only where vodafone has used "Generic Gear" e.g with a freq of 800mhz to 1000 because that is cheaper than singluar gear what vodafone have used in Large CBD Areas.

So in saying that, yes Telecom's 850 network is interfering with Vodafones network, except Telecom are in the right as they have brought the license to 850 and it is vodafones fault for not locking down the gear to their own network bands.

edit: "Please not he or she does not work directly with any mobile network, and any of this infomation can be found with a google search"

Aside from all this 'interference' gibber gabber (which will fly over most people's heads), from what I see Vodafone have done Telecom a big favor. For those who have somehow managed to miss Richard Hammond's face all over TV, this has put the fact Telecom are launching this new fangdangle network into mainstream news headlines.

This is just helping Telecom get the word out to the public... Should have thought this through a bit more Vodafone - no one likes a tell-tale.